ART: MR. BLANEY OF IRONBOUND, AND HIS DISTINGUISHED FRIENDS

The cliffs of Ironbound Island, in Frenchmans's Bay, with the hills of Mt. Desert Island in the background

Maine, thanks to the quality of its remarkable light and scenery, has long had a significant place in American art,  particularly and not surprisingly, landscape painting. From Alvan Fisher in the 1830's, to Fitz Henry Lane, Frederick Church and Thomas Cole in the mid 19th century, to John Marin,  Marsden Hartley, Rockwell Kent, and Thomas Bellows in the 1930's,  to William Kienbusch, Fairfield Porter, and of course, those damned Wyeths, in the 50's and 60's, many of America's best painters have passed through and left a record of our landscape as they saw it.   I have long intended to do a series of posts about the artists who have left their mark up here in our part of Maine, Down East of the Penobscot River, and today I offer the first story, about Dwight Blaney of Ironbound Island, and a few of the friends who visited him there.

Bronze bas relief portrait of Dwight Blaney by Bela Lyon Pratt (American 1867-1917).  In his hands, Blaney holds palette and brush, and in the background are the cliffs of Ironbound Island.

Dwight Blaney was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1865.  After attending the Chauncey Hall School in Boston, he trained as an architect, and worked for a time as a draftsman in the firm of Peabody & Stearns.  Deeply influenced by the impressionists, particularly Monet,  on a European trip, Blaney was one of the earliest of the American painters to use the new style.

 Dwight Blaney.  View from Ironbound Island To Frenchman, Oil on canvas, 1908

After marrying an heiress to the Eastern Steamship fortune, in 1880s, financial constraints were lifted, and Blaney, a convivial man of many interests, was free to pursue these with vigor.   He was one of the earliest collectors of American antiques, beginning in the 1880's, and a founder of the Walpole Society, that most exclusive of collecting clubs, whose ranks were to include Wallace Nutting and later, Henry Francis DuPont.  He was one of the first to buy and restore an early American house as his country home (in Weston, Massachusetts) His fascination with exploring the shell middens left behind by the ancient Native Americans led to one of the finest collections of artifacts of its day, and which later constituted constituted the first bequest to the new Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor when it opened in the 1920's.  After purchasing Ironbound Island, in Frenchman's Bay 3 miles off Bar Harbor as a summer home for his family, he spent the summer of 1904 studying the land snails of the Island.  From 1901-1909 he dredged Frenchman's Bay for marine mollusks, eventually identifying 149 varieties.   Two of these were new varieties, which were named for him:  Tonicella blaneyi (a chiton) and Oenopota blaneyi (a gastropod).  In 1904, he studied the land snails of Ironbound, and in 1916, he and Frederick Loomis Brewster, a palenontologist, extricated 23 varieties of mollusks from pleistocene clays on Mt. Desert.  He sailed.  And, he painted, maintaining a studio on Ironbound in the summer, and the rest of the year at the Fenway Studio in Boston from 1906-1943, a year before his death.  

Dwight Blaney.  Ironbound Island, Oil on canvas, 1910

Although the idea behind Ironbound Island was an idyllic summer life, without the pressures of fashionable resorts, the Blaneys were nevertheless a wealthy couple with position, and Ironbound was only three miles offshore from Bar Harbor, then at its height as one of the country's most fashionable watering places.  The Blaneys partook of the social life there, their presence at parties and as patrons of events duly noted in the Society pages of the New York Times. When the fashionable world came to Bar Harbor, an invitation to Ironbound often followed. and the Blaney's guest book recorded visits by leading society figures, famous writers, a prince (Rainier I of Monaco, who came to see Blaney's famous collection of shells), and most importantly, many of Blaney's fellow artists.  And what artists they were.  Below a few of the paintings of Ironbound created by Blaney's friends on visits to his magical island:

John Leslie Breck, American 1860-99, Cliffs, Ironbound Island.  Oil on canvas, 1898.  Breck, a friend of Monet, and part of the group of painters at Giverny, is considered to have been the first American Impressionist

 

Childe Hassam, American, 1859-1935.  Sunset, Ironbound Island, Mt. Desert, Maine, 1896

 

Child Hassam.  Portrait of Edith Blaney, Pastel on paper, 1894.  This portrait shows Mrs. Blaney at rest with the island garden behind her.  The book in her hand, charmingly, is Celia Thaxter's An Island Garden, about Thaxter's own garden on Appledore, illustrated by Hassam, and published that same year.

William McGregor Paxton, American, 1869-1941.  Oil on canvas, 1916.  This portrait shows Blaney's younger daughter in front of the drawing room fireplace of the main house on Ironbound, long since burned, with some of Blaney's antiques collection on display.

And there were others, including, in 1920 and 1922, John Singer Sargent, who was visiting his cousin Mary Hale at her Bar Harbor summer home, and no doubt touching base with his many clients and subjects in the summer colony.  He went out to Ironbound to stay with the Blaneys for a few days and produced seven paintings and sketches while there, of which these two below offer a seldom seen side of Sargent at rest with friends.

John Singer Sargent, American, 1856-1925. The Artist Sketching.  Watercolor on paper, 1922.  This virtuoso portrait is of Dwight Blaney at his easel on the shore at Ironbound Island

 

 John Singer Sargent painting aboard the Blaney yacht Irona, off Ironbound, 1922.  Notice the umbrella for shade lashed to Sargent's leg.

John Singer Sargent.  On the Verandah (Ironbound Island, Maine).  Watercolor on paper, 1920 or 1922.  This serene view depicts the Blaney family (left to right, daughter Elizabeth, Dwight Blaney, Mrs. Blaney, and daughter Edith) at leisure on the porch of the commodious farmhouse style cottage Blaney designed for Ironbound.

Although the main house burned many years ago, the island remains, with other structures, with conservation restrictions,  in the hands of the Blaney family, and is private.

 

Personal History:  After Blaney's death, the Dilettante's father, in the market for a boat, happened to go out to Ironbound to look at Blaney's boat,  Irona, a classic 38 footer with cabin, and purchased it.   On one mid-summer afternoon  in 1953, my parents--my mother nine months pregnant---were on that boat when it became clear that perhaps outer Blue Hill Bay was not where they should be.  Fortunately, it was a fast boat, and the local hospital is only a few hundred feet from the town dock, so I was not born on  Irona, after all  Many years later, I chanced to go out to Ironbound twice, once as the guest of a mutual friend of the Blaney's, who had been loaned one of the houses there for a long fall weekend, and again time with another friend who was visiting the Blaney's daughter Elizabeth Cram, then in her 80's.     It was a distinct pleasure to have her show me, in the amazing Ironbound guest book, along with sketches by the many famous artists to visit the island, the photos of my father taking away  Irona some 35 years earlier.  

Yesterday I asked my father about Irona, and he replied, deadpan, 'yes, handsome boat.  We had a lot fun with it, your mother and I.  Probably would still have it if you and your sister hadn't been such expensive children.  Particularly you."

Saving Mrs. Farrand's Plants: Asticou

 Note:  Because I have included an unusually large number of photographs in this post, I have kept the picture size smaller than usual.  Please click on images for larger detailed full size views.
  

 

 Beatrix Farrand in the 1940's, from The Reef Point Bulletins

I made my annual pilgrimage to the Asticou Azalea Garden on Mt. Desert Island a few days ago.  I was a little late this year---an early summer and almost endless sunshine ensured that the usual Memorial Day peak of this garden had actually come a week before.  Do not misunderstand.  It was still ravishing, as the photographs will show.  The story of how this lovely spot came into being, as a rescue effort,  is an interesting one. 

The great garden designer Beatrix Farrand had a lifelong love affair with Maine, having summered in Bar Harbor since early childhood.  Her feeling for the rugged landscape inspired much of her best work in a series of subtle gardens that blended into their rugged settings.  Her own Reef Point estate, inherited from her mother, was for many years her laboratory, where she experimented with design ideas and plantings both native and exotic.

Ocean front view of Reef Point (Reef Point Bulletins)

It was her hope to turn Reef Point, its extensive library, and collection of gardens into a foundation for the study of plants and landscape architecture, and to that end a board was formed, renovations were made to house and grounds for their future use, staff was hired, and plans were made for a distinguished future.  In addition to the plants and gardens and extraordinary library, the collections included the papers and plans of the English designer Gertrude Jekyll, which Mrs. Farrand had purchased at great personal expense when they were threatened with certain dispersal.

 A corner of the Library at Reef Point, as refitted for public use (Reef Point Bulletins)

Over one decade in the 1940's and 1950's, the world, and Bar Harbor, as Mrs. Farrand had known it, changed irrevocably.  A World War followed the Great Depression.  Two years after the end of the war, a forest fire devastated much of the town, destroying many of the estates of her friends and clients, and when the town re-built, it was not as a fashionable resort, but as a tourist destination.  Motels sprang up on the ruins of the estates, and masses replaced classes on the Main Street.  Not liking what she saw, worried about the future endowment ( the only niece of Edith Wharton, Mrs. Farrand was  not wealthy by the standards of the world she inhabited), and feeling that the new, less rarefied Bar Harbor, geographically remote, was not the appropriate location for the endeavor, she shut down the foundation in 1956.

The Blue Reception Room at Reef Point, with some of Mrs. Farrand's large collection of 18th century landscape prints on the walls. (Reef Point Bulletins)

She donated the library, the vast collection of landscape prints of three centuries, and the Jekyll archives to the documents collection at the University of California at Berkeley, where her husband, historian Max Farrand had taught.  She had the main house at Reef Point demolished. She herself arranged to retire to the family farm of her horticulturalist, Amy Garland, building an apartment between the Garland's house and barn, where she would live with her personal maid, Clementine Walter.  To create this new home, Farrand used salvaged architectural elements from Reef Point, and created an intimate garden, with many of her beloved roses, perennials and heaths and heathers, also brought from Reef Point.  Here Farrand died in 1959.

View of main garden axis from house at Reef Point, looking across heather plantings to Frenchman's Bay.  Urns in foreground are by Soderholtz (more about Soderholtz here)

 Another garden path at Reef Point.  The undulating edges of the flower borders, mimicking the edge of the forest, and the way the cultivated seemlessly blends to the natural, is deceptively simple, and brilliant. (Reef Point Bulletins)

Meanwhile, Reef Point was to be sold, and remaining there was the bulk of Mrs. Farrand's plant collection--(as late as the 1970's, I remember being struck by the perfect  effect of a Laburnum,  Golden Chain tree, over the fence, framing a view on shore path in front of the former Reef Point), including her remarkable collection of Azaleas and Rhododendrons.  Enter, to the rescue, the remarkable Charles Kenneth Savage.

The pool at the Asticou Azalea Garden

Charles Savage's family had long lived in nearby Northeast Harbor, where they owned the Asticou Inn, a big old shingled summer hotel.   Young Savage, noted for artistic talent at an early age, was at boarding school in Boston when his father died, and at the age of 17 he returned home to help his mother run the inn.  Savage, who loved the island, and its unique landscape, became friends with many of the leading talents of the day on Mt. Desert, notably Farrand, and landscape architect Joseph Curtis, who summered on the hillside just beyond Asticou Inn.  From both, Savage absorbed important lessons in the principles of landscape design, and the importance of using native plants and materials.   When Curtis died, leaving his property, with its carefully designed trails (a future post) as a public trust, Savage was its first trustee, and for many years the presiding genius of the place.  He also had a seat on the board of The Reef Point Foundation, and when Farrand decided to dismantle her life's work, Savage was given a year to rescue what plants he could.

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Casting about for a site, Savage seized upon the alder swamp across the street from his family's hotel, and armed with his ambitious plan, approached neighbor John D. Rockefeller Jr. whose own garden had been designed 25 years previously by Farrand, and Rockefeller agreed to finance the project.

Paths at Asticou

Savage, using the lessons he had learned so well from Farrand & Curtis, dredged the swamp to form a pool by the road, with the garden in the distance.  He conceived it as a Japanese stroll garden, harmonious with the rocky spruce clad landscape surrounding it.  A stream, with a gentle waterfall was formed, crossed by two bridges.  Savage, a talented sculptor in wood, had a particular feeling for stone, and selected many pieces of worn granite for integration into his design.  In this framework were planted azaleas, rhodendendrons and other shrubs from Reef Point.  A Japanese sand garden, inspired by one in Kyoto, was a surprise as one traveled the carefully raked gravel paths.

Two views of the sand garden at Asticou

A detail of stonework at waterfall at the South Bridge at Asticou, featuring Rhodendendron Kiusasianum

After Savage's death, stewardship of the garden passed to the Mt. Desert Land & Garden Preserve, funded by the Rockefeller family to maintain this garden, another Savage garden at Asticou (future post), and the spectacular Farrand garden designed for Abby Aldrich Rockefeller on their estate in neighboring Seal Harbor. Several additions have been made to the garden in recent years, notably a new entrance by Patrick Chasse from a parking lot at the rear of the property.

  Cornus Canadensis, Bunch berry, a favorite native ground cover of Farrand (and of the Dilettante)

Paths of finely crushed native pink granite are raked in patterns each morning, as they have been since Charles Savage's day.

An interesting fence screens the work area from the gardens

 

Do not adjust your sets.  The picture is not upside down.  Sky reflected in pond at Asticou

Modernism in Maine--Must See NYT

The ever intrepid architecture hound JCB spotted this article first, in the formerly un-navigable, now blessedly revamped New York Times 'T Magazine' online. For those of you who missed the article, click HERE, and head straight over to check out one of the most astonishing houses up in this part of Maine.  It is the Wm. A.M. Burden summer home in nearby Northeast Harbor, a joint collaboration between Wallace Harrison and Isamu Noguchi. Harrison, often referred to as the Rockefeller family architect, had a summer home in the area, and had also designed the spectacular and much less disciplined Nelson Rockefeller house in nearby Seal Harbor.

 The Burden House at Northeast Harbor (photo by Anthony Cotsifas, New York Time)   

I first saw the Burden house when sailing by thirty odd years ago, a startling and seductive contrast to its stately shingled and turreted neighbors along the Mt. Desert shore.  I remember for a moment weighing the idea of jumping ship and swimming to shore for a closer look. If you've ever swum in eastern Maine waters, you'd understand just how gobsmacked I was by this house.  Sailboats, sadly, do not have brakes for moments like this, and in an instant we were round the point and the house had disappeared behind the trees, the Dilettante looking back longingly.  Actually, I think I did for a second drop the jib sheet I was supposed to be tending.

Later, I was lucky enough to see the original house, where one of the most amazing sights was a boomerang dining table by Noguchi. My own six degrees of separation  to the story in the Times is that a client was renting the house when it burned, having to flee in the night.

Isamu Noguchi Table for Wm. A.M. Burden, laminated beechwood, 1948 (Noguchi Museum)

Mr. Burden, a financier, aviation consultant and former ambassador to Belgium (not to be confused with Perle Mesta, who had curlier hair),  was a major collector of modern art, one of the early movers and shakers in MOMA, eventually becoming president of its board.   His background was a stately one---'over the river and through the wood to grandmother's house we go' meant Florham, the vast country house of his grandparents, the Hamilton McKown Twomblys, now the Madison campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey

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Florham

Mrs. Twombly was the former Florence Vanderbilt, the longest lived and last surviving of Commodore Vanderbilt's well housed grandchildren.  By all accounts she was a formal and humorless woman.  Her siblings put up such iconic houses as Biltmore, the Breakers, and Marble house.  Mrs. Twombly's contributions to the family building spree included a Warren & Wetmore town house on the corner north of the Frick on 5th Avenue, Vinland, a vast Romanesque mausoleum of a house in Newport, and Florham, loosely based on Hampton Court palace, and despite its over 100 rooms, not exactly the best of McKim Mead & White's designs.  Even great architects have bad days. In a private letter one of the firm's partners, William Rutherford Mead, wrote: "Twombly wants a house on the order of an English Country gentleman.  I don't think he knows exactly what he means, and I am sure I don't..."  Apparently, Twombly's grandson had no such doubts about what he wanted---a comfortable, modern sculpture for living.

And the point is, lest I seem to have wandered too far, is that it's a long way from the Barberini tapestried marble halls of Florham and summer mansions in Newport to the sinuous curves of the Burden house on the rugged shores of Northeast Harbor.  Every action has a reaction, and what a terrific (under)statement Burden made with his house.

As long as you're in 'T' Magazine---and btw, how pathetic an attempt at hipness by the Times is that name? 'T' Magazine, 'W' Hotel---I guess the T stands for Trying Too Hard), check out the article about martinis.  It brings home what some of we martini drinkers already know as gospel--that  a proper martini is really cold gin, shaken with a drop of Vermouth, one small olive, not on a toothpick, served ice cold, straight up in a small stemmed glass. 

Don't we?

'SKYLANDS' BEFORE MARTHA

I finally got around to cleaning the desk.  Deep in the back of a drawer was a wrinkled file of clippings from the 80's.  Among them was a real estate brochure for Skylands, the Seal Harbor, Maine home of Martha Stewart, a couple of years before she purchased it.

View of Seal Harbor in the late 1920's.  The full bulk of the newly built Skylands can be seen at top left

The stories of Skylands are legion, and since most Martha followers can recite them as if liturgy----the  mile of pink crushed granite drives which are raked up, washed and stored every winter, the forest floors sprayed with buttermilk to encourage a mossy carpet, the superb craftsmanship, the heated drying cabinets for linens---the list goes on, and I won't bore the reader with yet another repetition.

Long story short:  The estate was developed for Edsel Ford, son of Henry.  The architect was Duncan Candler, a well connected society architect whose sister, Edith Candler Stebbins, had married into a leading Seal Harbor summer family.  Candler built up a fair summer practice in Seal Harbor, designing large, restrained and comfortable houses for  such other summer families as the Rockefellers, who occupied the next hill over from the Fords (future post).  Skylands is a severely geometric and horizontal house, gorgeously sited just below the brow of the hill, and appears to grow out of the very pink granite ledges on which it is built.  Despite it' academic qualities, it is as successful an example of a house growing organically from its site as any modernist effort.  The landscaping is by the brilliant Jens Jensen, who had also done the Ford's Michigan estate.  There is no lawn, and the subtle landscape he created, of boulders, and native plants, naturalness achieved at great expense, seems as inevitable as if Mother Nature herself had laid it out---a true example of the Capability Brown axiom "consult the genius of the place."  

Skylands in a 1930's postcard view

Oops.  I said I wouldn't go on, but born pedant that I am, I just can't help it.  Herewith, the pictures (sorry for the wrinkles) from the real estate brochure.   The house was at the time owned by the Leedes, who bought it from the Ford estate in the 1970's.  Though the house was not as lavishly burnished and maintained as in the Ford's day (hot and cold running staff helped), the Leedes' did regularly call in Mrs. Ford's old decorators, the Palm Beach firm of Jessup, Inc. to keep things up.  Although the Fords left their furnishings, they took the art, and the pallid framed pieces do not live up to the architecture. Very Wasp , very understated, slightly boring.  Now, of course, the joint is just plain jaw-dropping.  Everything perfectly maintained, the neglected landscape restored to perfection, and maintained beyond perfection.

Entrance Front

The paneled two story entrance hall leads into this living hall, with a fireplace carved of native pink granite.

The 30 x 50 living room

Dining room.

The superb terrace which overlooks most of creation

Most of creation, as seen from the terrace

Pergola Terrace off Living Room

The Playhouse, with squash court